Effective Erosion Education

Traditional Owners, Indigenous Rangers, and Queensland Parks and Wildlife staff spent a week on southern Cape York learning the fundamentals of managing and understanding erosion.

The November workshop, which was attended by 14 people, was run by Griffith University’s Dr Andrew Brooks, Dr Robin Thwaites, Dr Nic Doriean and Mr John Spencer.

Dr Brooks, who has been involved in erosion management, gully remediation and water quality monitoring on the Cape for over a decade, said the workshop was a pilot, designed to elicit local feedback to ensure future erosion management courses in Cape York are on point.

‘Participants provided advice and feedback to us throughout the week – this will be used to ensure that future training is culturally appropriate, and meets the needs of Indigenous participants,’ Dr Brooks said.

‘The plan for the future is to run a series of week - long courses delving more deeply into topics covered during this course.

‘The education program will support Traditional Owners to gain experience and accreditation in areas such as identifying and understanding soils, planning and designing a gully rehabilitation strategy, implementing a gully rehabilitation strategy; and designing and implementing a water quality monitoring program to measure the effectiveness of a gully rehabilitation strategy.’

This project is funded by Queensland Government's Natural Resources Investment Program.